Rail vehicles that are manufactured to transport molten metal are usually referred to as “torpedo cars” or “ladle cars”. These torpedo cars are filled, through an orifice located on the upper part of the car, with molten metal which may reach temperatures in excess of 2000° F. To remove the molten metal, the torpedo car body is rotated to its side, thereby allowing the molten metal to flow through the orifice out of the torpedo car. Eventually, the torpedo car through repeated use or through factors such as poor workmanship or inferior material, will experience a breach of the torpedo car body, thereby allowing the molten metal to spill.
To prevent such a spill from occurring, many foundries have implemented proactive maintenance programs to detect potential points of weakness or thinness on the torpedo body, prior to failure. As part of the maintenance program, foundries traditionally use two thermal scanners or cameras mounted on either side of the torpedo car tracks to capture an image of the underside of the torpedo body as the torpedo car passes by. The resulting image, and more specifically, the resulting hot spots that are revealed by the pair of thermal scanners or cameras are then used to determine if and where the weak or thin areas are located on the torpedo body.
Unfortunately, due to the narrow field of view of the thermal scanners or cameras and due to their limited mounting positions for obtaining an image of the underside of the torpedo car body, certain areas of the underside of the torpedo car body are blocked or missed, creating the possibility of missing thin and weak areas. To obtain a larger field of view, a larger or wider lens or one or more thermal imagers may be used, thereby eliminating or reducing the size of the missed areas on the underside of the torpedo car body. However, the images that are produced by the thermal imagers may be distorted, due to the size of the lens required to obtain the proper field of view. Additionally, a disadvantage to using more than one of the thermal cameras or scanners, or the thermal imagers as described above, is the cost of having to obtain and maintain a pair of thermal cameras, scanners, or imagers.
Furthermore, due to many varying factors such as ambient temperatures, humidity levels, general weather conditions such as rain, snow, and the hotspots that are revealed by the thermal scanners or cameras can vary greatly on the same torpedo car depending on the those same varying factors. The lack of compensation for these varying factors may, therefore, provide for inaccurate temperature measurements.